Controversy Reigns During Local Call Of Duty Qualifiers

This weekend saw the best Xbox 360 Call of Duty teams in the country battle it out for a spot in the Call of Duty World Championships, which will be held later this year and boast a $1 million prize pool. This weekend was all about finding out who the best team locally was, and who would then take our flag to represent us on a world stage. Sadly, the entire thing was ruined by the participation of foreign players.

The day began with favourites Team Adept winning their first two games, with many believing they would make it to the final and possibly fight it out with long-time rivals, Hi5. Hi5 were also making good progress, reaching the final before anyone else and waiting to see who they would face. Team Adept made it to the semi-finals, where they were put up against Team RiZe. This is where things got all sorts of weird.

Team RiZe had a mix of local and foreign players, two of which were playing from the UK. Now according to the rules set by Major League Gaming, a team only required at least two local participants, which RiZe had. Another rule also states that hosting of games must switch between teams every two matches, in order to keep things fair since the tournament wasn’t being hosted over a local LAN. Again, not a problem if every hosting is in the same country, but what happens if, say, a person from the UK decided to host?

That’s exactly what happened during the game with RiZe, as Team Adept was forced to play with close to 200ms of lag while at least two -players on RiZe were lag free. Apparently an MLG referee was called in to make a ruling before the game could begin, deciding whether the latency was small enough to keep things fair. This referee, situated in the USA, was somehow able to make an accurate call by her standards, ruling that the latency experienced by players here in South Africa was negligible. How that ruling can be made from the other side of the world is beyond me, but ultimately the game went on.

And, as expected, Adept struggled, eventually losing to Team RiZe and failing to make it to the final. Hi5 now carried the hopes of South Africa, as the local community was already in uproar over the tactics employed by RiZe. Sadly, Hi5 was unable to beat RiZe in the final as well, dropping points on locally hosted matches but then standing no chance on those hosted from the UK. So at the end of the day a team that wasn’t even fully South African was now going to the World Championships to represent us, which ignited a rather hectic Twitter debate. In the end, Team Adept and Hi5 both lodged complaints with the MLG, and shortly after players from Team RiZe began asking what would happen if they had to forfeit. RiZe then also lodged a call with the MLG, hoping to see their own victory overturned and maybe replayed with better hosting.

The teams have yet to say whether they have been contacted back by the MLG, or what their ruling is, but for a brief moment the local Call of Duty community was united against a ruling that ruined the local qualifiers. It was great to see RiZe step up and admit that their victory was not fair, and we can only hope that the MLG will see this too.

Seen a video on this seems really unfair I have played on UK servers before and got like 200 to 250 ping witch in any case is unplayable and most definately not acceptable in a competition of this scale. The rules should be that the SA players on the Rize team should host and the 2 UK players should suffer because it is a SA qualifier!

TrollWithBasher

This is exactly what the previous eN dota team used to do. Get international players to sub for them and then force you to play on European servers for a local tournament (hosted by their manager who also defined the rules for the tournament :D). So we got more international players to sub for us and we crushed them at their own game. #developingSAeSports

Matt Merks

The tournament in question was my actual day job and I would not jeopardize my reputation by catering to the team I managed. I believe Dota 2 is a global game and I am not here to specifically cater only to South Africans. See my Starcraft II events in the past.

Logic Police

So why was there a limit of international players allowed, if you’re not catering for South Africans only? Yet a server rule in place to force (in that occurrence the majority of the players (SA)) to play on European servers (instead of the minority (INT) on SA servers). Sounds like you were catering for a very specific situation. Also if it’s possible to compete on 250ms, why can’t the 2 INT players play with 250ms on SA instead of the 8 SA players play with 250 ping on EU? That aside there are quite a few heroes that you can’t “reliably” play on 250 ping, so your statement is just false. When SK Gaming Dota came to SA for Africon, their players were complaining about the 60 ping they got on LAN. It definitely has a huge impact on the game.

I am not sure what your response is about, but you have no idea what you are talking about.

Matt Merks

It is easy, EU players don’t get the same ping to us as we get to them(At the time is was unplayable for Internationals connecting to our servers, see pretty much all international players dropping out of the DGL once the ZA server rule came into effect). There was a limit because it is inherently a South African tournament but had/has teams playing with a couple of international players a lot of the time, making it a global game. We played on EU servers for about a year before we got our own servers, don’t know if you were around for that(since you are hiding behind anonymity to make your attacks) but I can only presume you did not know that. Most of our top teams continue to see great success in international events, again not played on our local servers.

If you do not like the rules of an event it does not help your cause attacking it a fair while after such event has happened. The only players who had a problem with the rule were those who ended up losing to a team with international players in it. Let me remind you that it was not only eN who had used international players and let me remind you that eN has also been disqualified from one of my events for breaking rules.

Now, back to the topic of discussion. Dota 2 is playable on 200ms+ ping, FPS games are not. I don’t understand why you are laying attacks on me, my company or my rulesets.

I do not know why you think you can pick this fight here.

VoidWithBasher

What is your definition of a fight? I’m just recalling past events that are similar to the topic at hand. Why do you feel you need to defend yourself ;D? As a manager (my nice way of saying ‘not a competitive dota player’) I can see why you think 200ms doesn’t mean anything, but most if not all pro dota players will disagree with you. That’s why they do coin flips to see who gets to play on what server when lets say a NA team plays against an EU team. They even do it for east Europe (Russians) vs west Europe. Because it actually makes a huge difference.

Matt Merks

Because this is nowhere near the issue at hand and I feel the need to defend myself because you(if it was you) have taken stabs at me.

Let me clarify, I have been in competitive gaming for a substantial amount of time. I never said that 200ms was ideal and doesn’t mean anything. All I said was that it means nothing in this circumstance of Dota vs FPS games, which you do not seem to understand.

SpiritBreakerWithBasher

Matt Merks, do you live in the USA?

Matt Merks

I do not.

http://egamer.co.za/author/cavie Caveshen “CaViE” Rajman

I have to say, I was quite proud of how everyone came together during this whole saga. Kudos to RiZe also for being so selfless about this.

hsnsbshs

As a Brit, this was a low blow and I expect better from my fellow brits in the FPS scene, considering we are the best.